Cooperative dispatching for minimizing mean flowtime in a dynamic flowshop

A new, cooperative job dispatching approach is presented to minimize the mean flowtime in dynamic flowshops. A dispatching decision taken at any machine is reached collectively through consultation with other machines, and conflicting priorities are resolved by employing a penalty-based procedure. Computer results indicate that the proposed cooperative dispatching gives improvements ranging between 1.5% and 11.4% over other dispatching rules, under different levels of shop congestion, and for flowshops possessing various combinations of intermediate FIFO (first-come first-served) and non-FIFO buffers.